


Advice Over Biscuits

by methylviolet10b



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Crossover, Defintely AU, Melancholy, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-26
Updated: 2015-06-26
Packaged: 2018-04-06 05:56:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4210563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/methylviolet10b/pseuds/methylviolet10b
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John gets yet more unexpected advice - perhaps more than he's willing to hear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Advice Over Biscuits

**Author's Note:**

> This might make more sense if you read [Advice Over Drinks](http://archiveofourown.org/works/687773) and [Advice Over Coffee](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1965717) first. Then again, it might not. You certainly might recognize another character here. And absolutely no beta. This was written in a rush. You have been warned.

“You really shouldn’t buy them if you don’t like them.”  
  
John blinked, startled, and looked down at his plate. What had started out as two oatmeal biscuits was now a jagged collection of pieces and crumbs. “Sorry,” he offered automatically, and then looked up.  
  
He hadn’t expected to recognize the woman addressing him. The voice wasn’t familiar. But there was something about the woman’s tweeds, the classic bones and lines of a face that must have been stunning in her youth and was still timelessly lovely now in her later years, that struck a chord of memory.  
  
“Were they that terrible?” she went on as he struggled to put a name to her, or at least place her in context.  
  
John looked down at the plate again, and realized that he had no idea. If he’d taken a bite of either biscuit, he didn’t remember it. His stomach still churned with hunger, among other things.  
  
“Not the biscuits, then,” the woman murmured, her eyes knowing. “It must be your partner.”  
  
_Martini_. That was where he remembered her from – a very confused, one-sided conversation in a pub about cleaning, of all things. About cleaning _their_ flat, his and Sherlock’s. He felt his jaw clench as anger surged up again.  
  
“Oh my, definitely your partner. Only people we care about deeply can make us so angry.” She tilted her head, considering him with a sharpness that belied her age. “And it’s the people who know us the best, care about us the most, that can hurt us so thoroughly.”  
  
John went still as his anger focused on a new target. “Excuse me. I don’t believe I know you.”  
  
“Nor I you, except having seen you about,” the woman agreed pleasantly enough, ignoring John’s coldly angry tone. “I suppose I’m poking in where I’m not wanted. A bad habit, but one of the few advantages of being old is that it lets you get away with saying things that are unforgivable from the young. And anger, however justified, burns so many things.”  
  
She smiled briefly, and even through his outrage, John noticed that the lines on her face were meant for smiles. But it didn’t look like she’d been smiling much recently, and this smile faded all too quickly back into solemnity. There were other lines on her face, too, that showed when she didn’t smile; ones that spoke of pain and regret.  That sudden awareness made him pause, curbed the worst of his temper. _Caring isn’t one of his hallmarks, and it’s not just the old who say unforgivable things,_ he thought bitterly.  “I’m sure you mean well,” he said instead, not warmly, but kinder than he might have otherwise.  
  
“Sometimes it’s the meaning well that hurts most of all.”  
  
If he’d been a lesser man, John would have flinched. He rose from his chair instead and picked up his plate. “Were you looking for a table?” he asked politely. “I’m done here.”  
  
“Thank you, I would like to sit down for a while.” Her smile flickered and vanished again. “I have time, and I can see that you’re in a hurry to get on.”  
  
He held the chair for her automatically, then stepped back. Something in her posture and in the way she thanked him made him pause once more. He had a sudden remembrance of her with a man in a bowler hat, a man with bright blue eyes and a winning smile.  “Are you waiting for someone?”  
  
She shook her head. “Not today.”  
  
“All right then.”  He turned and walked off, uncomfortable with all the emotions roiling within him. She was right about one thing, that woman. He was in a hurry, or should be. Fuming over biscuits wasn’t going to accomplish anything. It was past time to have a word or five with Sherlock. And then… well, then maybe a lot of things. One thing was certain: enough was enough, and things couldn’t continue on like they had. Unconsciously his stride changed, his tread steadying into the regular march of a soldier.  
  
Just the same, he found himself looking back at the woman as he pulled the shop door behind him. The image stuck with him as he walked away: that of a once-lovely, still-beautiful woman in tweed, perfectly still and upright in the chair, her solitary cup of tea sitting untouched on the table in front of her.

 

  
Daniel Patrick Macnee  
6 February 1922 – 25 June 2015  
_Good night, Mr. Steed._

**Author's Note:**

> Written June 25, 2015


End file.
